Make a List: How a Simple Practice Can Change Our Lives and Open Our Hearts by Marilyn McEntyre

Author:Marilyn McEntyre
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company

HOW A LIST BECOMES A PRAYER

I know a number of faithful people who keep prayer lists for daily use, paying generous attention to others’ particular needs, sometimes asking what to pray for so that they might focus the energy of their prayers like a laser beam directly on what needs to be healed or clarified or resolved. One of them asked me once, months after I had mentioned a concern to her, whether it had been resolved and if she might take it off her list for the time being. I was both startled and touched by her fidelity to the small, significant task of praying for me in such a quietly sustained way.

Prayer lists can easily become rote, of course. Children often learn to pray for others by means of the nightly reci­tation of family folk: “God bless Mommy and Daddy and Johnny and Susie (if she stops being mean) and Biscuit the dog and Sinbad the cat and all the goldfish.” Such prayers, sweet as they can be, stagnate if the lists aren’t refined and focused and widened and rooted in humble recognition that all of us need, periodically, to ask again, “Lord, teach us to pray.”

But the listing impulse is good because it keeps our prayers from falling into a deepening groove of self-preoccupation, and makes us mindful of the needs around us. If we think concentrically about those needs, the list might widen from self to family to school and church, to the local streets to the wild spaces nearby (and all their struggling creatures) to state and nation, to the planet we share and the condition of its atmosphere and oceans. That’s a large agenda, to be sure, but it focuses prayer energy on every dimension of life on earth and keeps us aware of ourselves as pilgrims and sojourners, partners and parents, neighbors and strangers, and sometimes the only passerby available to respond to the call of the moment.

A prayer list can deepen and sharpen our focus as well as widen it. When I pray for my granddaughter, for her life and learning in school, for her health and happiness, I may also find on my list of her needs some things that open doors to further reflection on what it may be like to be a girl-child of six in this culture and this place—what pressures she feels to grow up too soon, what kinds of decisions her parents have to keep making about all she’s exposed to when she walks out the door. I become aware of how early girls are induced to think of themselves in sexualized terms, how vulnerable they are to subtle, if not overt, forms of abuse, how easily their spontaneity can be crushed by meanness, and how their confidence may need to be fostered by adults who take them seriously.

A mental list of moments I have witnessed (or one written down for the purpose) can keep my thoughts about this child connected to my heartfelt experience of

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